The present invention is directed to a method of selecting an item which matches the skin tone of a person, and to a method of manufacturing an item to match a person's skin tone. More particularly, the present invention is directed to the selection of adhesive bandages in a matching skin tone, or the manufacture of adhesive bandages to match a particular skin tone.
The present invention applies especially to adhesive bandages of the type wherein an absorbent dressing is carried by an adhesive-coated backing; the type normally worn to cover superficial cuts, and often exposed to public view. However, the present invention also applies to adhesive bandages without the traditional gauze dressing, worn to conceal a scar or keloid. In fact, the invention applies to any product applied to the skin where it is desired that the product blend in with the wearers skin, so as to be, "invisible".
Adhesive bandages in skin tones matching that of the wearer have long been desired. However, it has grown to be expected that these adhesive bandages, even individual adhesive bandages, will be sterile wrapped. And this is the difficulty in offering the retail consumer a package of sterile bandages that match their individual skin tone. For years, wholesale production of adhesive bandages in enough colors to match any skin tone has proved impossible.
Stop gap measures provide matching skin tones for a few people. For example, adhesive bandages in a single pinkish-beige "flesh tone" have long been available in the United States, though the United States has consumers of many skin tones. Recently, a transparent plastic backing strip, revealing the skin tone of the wearer, has been used in an attempt to make an invisible bandage. However, the transparent strips leave the white of the gauze dressing exposed through the transparent backing. In addition, blood, or other wound secretions, may also be visible.
Various attempts have been made to hide the gauze in a transparent bandage, but have met with only mixed success. The desire for matching skin tone bandages remains unresolved. In fact, in the current market for children's bandages, the manufacturers have abandoned any attempt to match skin tone. A dozen different brands of children's adhesive bandages use many dozen brightly-colored cartoon like pictures, to decorate the bandage, or turn the bandage into a "tattoo".
U.S. Pat. No. 2,905,174 discloses an attempt to hide the gauze dressing of a transparent bandage by printing the backing with a "plurality of visible flesh colored markings". It is important to note that these markings are of the same color regardless of the skin tone of the customer. This structure presents a compromise. The markings over the gauze must be intense enough to help hide the gauze, but not so intense that the color of the wearers skin can't blend away the "flesh colored skin tones" of the markings. The patent suggests that the print pattern be made from opaque paints, in particular, rust brown and ocher from iron oxide, and carbon black; but the clear intent is to use the skin tone of the wearer to help blend-in the markings on the bandage. The skin tone of the wearer does not appear on the bandage.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,687.136 discloses a bandage with a transparent backing, a gauze dressing, and a piece of colored film therebetween to obscure the gauze dressing. The colors suggested are "white, black, yellow or bronze". Thus, a rectangle of one of these colors will be visible through the transparent backing.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,161,176 provides a bandage with many layers, releaseably secured atop one another, and the underlying bandage. Each layer is of a different color. This construction allows the wearer to peal off layers to select which color they desire. However, the layers have only a releasable fastening, and the color selected, as well as the remaining layers, may be easily stripped away. This sort of bandage construction also presents the user with many layers of easily accessible adhesive, which could make the bandage difficult to apply, and wear.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,586,971 discloses a bandage with an irregular edge, onto which a layer of makeup may be applied. It is intended that the make-up be "feathered in" about the edges, to blend-in with the skin tone of the wearer. The bandages of this patent, some without gauze pads, are perhaps more intended to hide the wound or scar than dress it. The "invisibility" of this bandage depends completely on the makeup, described at column 2, lines 41-43, as "any type of make-up including liquid, cream or stick types, provided they have the flowability and malleability to be able to be spread to effectively to cover the underlying adhesive tape". The examples given are of commercially available make up manufactured by e.g. Revlon, Inc. Make-up moves. The thicker the layer of make-up, the faster it moves. It moves laterally, smearing across the skin (or bandage), and it comes up, off the skin (or bandage).
U. S. Pat. No. 5, 120,325 discloses a bandage manufactured with a melanin or melanin-type pigment in, or on, the backing layer. An expanded description of these pigments, and how to achieve them, is presented at column 3, line 12 through column 4, line 30. A broad range of colors is included, but no description is given as to how to match a bandage to a skin tone, or how to select a matching skin tone bandage.
U.S. Pat. Des. 402,371 claims an adhesive bandage with an apertured brown plastic backing strip. There is no disclosure of a method of selecting a matching skin tone adhesive bandage, or a method of manufacturing such a bandage.
Store displays of paint or hair color often include a color chart or chips. Adjustment of a paint color is easy because it is a liquid. The blending of paints, on-site, to achieve a very close match to a particular color has been done for years. Matching hair color is often not the purpose of the purchase. The new color supplants the old, wherever it is applied. Matching is not required. The contrast of the new hair color is, hopefully, "coordinated" with the existing skin tone.
The method of manufacture, and/or selecting, a matching skin tone bandage according to the present invention is not disclosed or suggested by any of the above.